The proposed changes have elicited sharp opposition from many public school leaders.

"I want to believe that Gov. Snyder has our students' best interests at heart, but I am beginning to believe he just wants to dismantle public education," Tresa Zumsteg, interim superintendent of Rochester Community Schools, told The Oakland Press.

Most of the brain power for the proposals is coming from lawyers Richard McLellan and Peter Ruddell and education consultant Mary Kay Shields, who the governor asked to propose a new Michigan Public Education Finance Act to replace the existing School Aid Act of 1979. The act is designed to incorporate the policies articulated in the governor's "Any Time, Any Place, Any Way and Any Pace" special message on education delivered in April of last year.

McLellan is a familiar figure in education circles. He helped draft Michigan's charter school law and has remained at the forefront of the "schools of choice" debate since its emergence in the early 1990s.

The Oxford Foundation is acting as fiscal agent for the governor's office to administer the school finance project. The Oxford Foundation was established in 1991 by the then-Gov. John Engler to assist the state in "lessening the burdens of government."

McLellan said the new act is designed to align with House Bill 5923, the New Forms of Schools and Online Learning Bill that would implement, in part, the governor's vision.

The purposes of the proposal are to develop a public education funding system that: creates career-ready citizens; provides seamless transitions for the pupil between early childhood, elementary, secondary and post-secondary education; promotes individual learning styles; enables parents and pupils to employ education programming options that ensure their future success; and provide greater access to self-paced programs enabling a pupil below grade level to have additional time and help to gain competency, while a high achieving pupil may accelerate academically.

The stated goal of the finance act would be to "create the path toward more robust performance-based funding," according to the Oxford Foundation. Key components would:

n Remove district "ownership" of a student. A student would be allowed to take a course, multiple courses or the student's entire bundled education package from any public education district in the state. A local school district would maintain its ability to determine whether to participate in open enrollment.

n Create online learning options with performance funding. The law would recognize that technology is changing the delivery of instruction to students. A student would be allowed to access instruction from across the state using advancing technology. The district providing the online course would receive public funding, based on performance measures. A district would not be allowed to limit a student's choices.

n Ensure that funding follows the student. Under the current model, a school receives 90 percent of its state general education funding based on where a student sits on the first Wednesday in October. The act would implement an Average Daily Membership method for allocating funds that 15 other states are already using, according to information from the foundation.

n Create an incentive for students -- who are ready -- to graduate early. The state would grant $2,500 for each semester a student graduates early.

In a memo last month, McLellan said the team was "trying to create a framework that will allow rapid change and innovation, particularly in the technology area. There is a tendency to be overly prescriptive and mandate the latest flavor of innovation being proposed.

"Technology is moving faster than any policy will be able to anticipate or react. One of the major goals of unbundling education is to create more consumers of education services, where there are not consumers. The largest segments of consumers of online learning are those pupils seeking credit recovery or catching up so as to graduate on time. The pupils were 'nonconsumers' in the traditional education system. By turning these pupils into full consumers of education services, we will improve our workforce by creating more career and college ready pupils," McLellan said.

Writing for The Grand Rapids Press, State Board of Education President John Austin excoriated the proposal.

"This legislation creates an unlimited and largely unregulated marketplace of new online schools, for-profit-run schools, schools run by businesses, universities, community organizations and municipal governments," Austin wrote. "It would allow new authorizers to create schools in any location, for any reason, with little oversight."

Austin said the proposal "looks a lot like a voucher program where individuals get the money and shop for what they want in education. This was rejected by Michigan voters before -- in part because of its perceived destructive impact on local school systems around the state."

He also claims an effort is being made to approve the measures in the lame-duck session, but supporters say that is not the case, and that no action is planned until next year.

There is certain to be lots written and said about the ideas in the coming weeks.

Glenn Gilbert is executive editor of The Oakland Press. Contact him at glenn.gilbert@oakpress.com or 248-745-4587. Follow him on Twitter @glenngilbert2.